Forum: Watching Dear You with my elderly family members was heart-warming
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I watched the movie Dear You recently with my mother, 89, her sister, 95, and her brother, 92. I could not understand much of the Teochew dialect spoken in the movie, but I could follow the storyline by reading the English subtitles.
My mother, uncle and aunt understood half the Teochew spoken, and they tried their best to follow the storyline by half-listening and half-reading the Chinese subtitles as the Teochew spoken in the movie was somewhat different from that typically spoken in Singapore.
Though they were not able to understand the whole storyline fully, they could, however, feel the warmth of the occasion, as it was the first time they were watching a movie together in a cinema.
It is not the language or dialect used in the movie that matters at the end of the day. It is how the director captures the nuances and universal themes of helping one another, not just one’s immediate family members but also people in the village with the same predicament, and this made the movie worth watching.
Seeing some of the other cinema patrons (in their 60s and 70s) giving up their seats to my mother, aunt and uncle while we waited for the doors to open, and the cinema ushers letting us escort our elderly folks to their seats without checking the tickets and with murmurs of “kakinang” (“we are family” in Teochew), made the trip to the cinema a heart-warming and worthwhile experience.
Loh Shurn Lin
